Shopping is over. Retail has gone dark. Whether in bust advanced economies, or fast-growing emerging ones, it is unfit for us and unable to change course.

Wherever we are in the world, we need to reset retail so that it helps us thrive. We know that our lives don’t run on consumer spending alone so lets transform what was once called shopping into something that is geared up to give us more.

A better blueprint

to help us flourish

Let’s nurture creativity, craft and ingenuity at every turn and help 21st century skills and ideas flourish. Creativity

When was the last time you were delighted, excited or inspired when out shopping? We have the tools to remedy this connection deficit disorder.Experiences

Helping people get together – be they radical pioneers on the edges of enterprise or enthusiastic amateurs with a passion – is a cornerstone of retail reset therapy. Collaboration

Where are the ampitheaters with round-the-clock workshops or the total immersion journeys teaching us about places and products? Learning can’t be confined to the classroom.Learning

Field notes

Discover what is really going on at retail’s edges on the tumblr blog that keeps an eye on things that are good, bad and ugly.

From the lobotomy inducing, identikit mediocrity of chain store misery and shopping mall oblivion, to the credo of hyperconsumption above all else (like, say, solvency, health or love), it seems like we’re enveloped in a thick, melancholy, life-sucking smog.

Apple, taking its cue from elBulli, has a golden opportunity to radically transform what it does into something so next-level, only it could have the audacity, temerity, imagination and wit to give it a go. Their prize for doing this? Nothing less than saving the shredded, consumption-addicted global economy from eating itself.

Ever smaller margins, shorter product cycles, cheaper stuff, consumed faster, kept for shorter lengths of time. Big retail faces a battle for survival that has made the race to the bottom – based on cost and volume – the only game in town. We are being served up the dregs of our supposed accumulation fixation that lives on in terminal decline to (almost) everyone’s detriment.